Of Merchants & Heros

by Paul Waters

  I returned to the bench beneath the jasmine and considered. I shall not pretend I was greatly surprised. I told myself what one hears everywhere: that a man’s pleasures are his own. Yet I found myself filled with distaste. This was not just any man; he was the man who had chosen to marry my mother.

  Nothing of the varied diversions of Tarentum had seemed to interest him. I recalled with an ironic smile how he had declared, primly, that he did not have time for such frivolity as the theatre or the concerts at the odeion, or the pleasant garden walks. I reflected too that, for all his money, he had chosen only this harsh-faced trull as a companion. Yet how could it be otherwise? He would never have picked a woman with the charm and refinement of Xanthe or Pasithea. They would have shown him up for what he was.

  When, later, he finally emerged from his rooms, dull-eyed and irritable, for my mother’s sake I did not mention the girl. But when, later in the day, he snapped that he was tired, I allowed myself to say, ‘You should do your best to sleep more, sir, in spite of all this work. You are getting no younger, after all, and look what happened to Caeso.’

  When Titus next invited me to one of his dinner-parties, his brother Lucius was there. As soon as I could do so discreetly, I made my apologies for my mistake. He seemed to accept them; but he looked at me oddly, as if he did not know what I was talking about. Perhaps this was how he showed I was forgiven. It was disconcerting, in one who looked so like Titus, to find his manner so different. From a distance they looked identical. The same chin and brow and falling brown hair, the same regular features. But there was a sullenness about his mouth and eyes, like an ill-bred child’s deprived of what it wants.

  There was always a studied Greekness to these gatherings. A youth or a girl would gently sing to the accompaniment of a lyre or flute; or, at other times, Titus would arrange for some well-known rhapsode from Tarentum or other of the Greek cities in Italy to recite tales of heroes and ancient love. There was style in everything, and careful good manners.

  All this I noticed, because it was new, and diverting, and exotic. I noticed too that it seemed to irk Lucius. He talked over the music; he complained that the service at dinner, with its carefully chosen, exquisitely prepared portions, was too slow; but most of all he complained about the wine, for he was a man who liked to drink at his own pace, which was faster than anyone else’s. To make his point, he would drain his cup no sooner than the serving-boy had filled it, then indicate it was empty by setting it down loudly on the little olivewood table in front of his couch and gesturing with a snap of his finger for the boy to refill it.

  Not surprisingly, after the way we had met, I seldom found cause to speak to him, nor he to me. But at one such party he came striding across the room and, interrupting my conversation with Villius and Pasithea, asked abruptly, ‘Where do you live? Is it the house above the harbour? The one with the white walls and tall palms?’

  I answered that it was, and at this he nodded and walked off, and I thought no more about it.

  But then, next morning, Telamon came to me and said, ‘Marcus, sir. There is a man to see you.’

  It was Lucius.

  ‘I am going to the palaistra,’ he said. ‘I do not like to go alone, and thought you might come.’

  I must have looked at him with surprise. I have never been good at hiding my feelings. I blush when I am angry, and I gape like an idiot when I am shocked. This time, though, I had self-command enough to hide my astonishment with a cough. I knew that Titus, with his liking for Greek things, would occasionally go to the palaistra, with its wrestling-ground and running-tracks and ball courts. But even he went only when his Greek friends invited him.

  If you are Roman, you will understand this reticence. At home I had certainly hardened my body, in the normal work of the farm, in hunting, or, more recently, in teaching myself to run and throw the javelin and swing the ancient heavy sword I had found in the outhouse. To all these there was purpose. But to work one’s body as an end in itself, as a sculptor might work clay into a statue, or a potter a fine pot, was still a thing strange to Romans.

  But I thought to myself: Titus has set the fashion in Greek manners, and Lucius is following it. It came to me too that this was some sort of peace-offering by Lucius. It would be churlish to refuse, when he had made a special point of coming to my house.

  So I called for my cloak and we set off.

  The palaistra in Tarentum lay not far from the library. It was a complex of colonnaded courts, some laid with turf, others paved, and shaded by plane trees and tall cypresses. The entrance was through an archway, off the street behind the library gardens.

  We passed through the gate and into the small fountain-court where the changing rooms and bath-house were. From somewhere I could hear the laughter of youths and the splash of water; and, further off, the barking orders of the wrestling-trainer.

  ‘This way,’ said Lucius.

  I began to wonder what he had in mind. I hoped it was not boxing or wrestling. I had never wrestled in my life, and the boxers I had seen about the streets of Tarentum were fearsome creatures, bruised and cauliflower-eared. But, stealing a quick glace at Lucius, I reminded myself that these sports would suit him even less than me.

  He was biting his lip and glancing about. No doubt, I thought, his friends would be waiting somewhere, though he had not mentioned any friends on the way. Perhaps, I thought, Titus was here, and this was Lucius’s little joke.

  We came out in a grassy colonnaded square with a running-track.

  In the shadow of the covered walkway, he halted.

  I glanced about. I could see no one I recognized, no friends approaching to greet us.

  Beside the track the running-trainer, a lean greying man in a homespun tunic, stood leaning on his cane, chatting with a group of youths. By the look of it, he had just finished a session. Around the court the youths were scattering, ambling off in twos and threes in the direction of the bath-house.

  I looked at Lucius. His lips were slightly parted; his eyes were fixed on the middle distance, where a youth about my age was standing with his friends.

  Just then the youth laughed, and laughing glanced round. His hair was golden-bronze, short-cropped, and dark about his brow, where his sweat had made it damp. Standing naked as he was, dusty from the track, he might have been some god’s statue, perfect in proportion.

  As he turned, he saw Lucius staring at him. For an instant he paused, and his smile turned to a frown. He looked quickly away, and made some comment to his friends. At this, one or two of them looked our way.

  The youth said something else, and then with purpose they all walked off in the direction of the bath-house.

  Beside me, Lucius let out his breath. I had not realized, till then, that he had been holding it in.

  ‘That,’ he said, following the youth with hungry eyes, ‘is Menexenos.’

  Afterwards he wandered on, but listlessly, seemingly without purpose, through the spreading complex of the palaistra, along colonnades, across lawns, through gardens. We came to the swimming-pool. Three or four swimmers were ploughing strongly through the glittering sun-reflecting water. Lucius narrowed his eyes and peered at them, and I had the sense he was looking to see if one of them was the youth we had seen on the running-track.

  I was tempted to say, ‘I think your friend went to the bath- house.’ But he had begun to grow sulky and irritable; and besides, I had the sense that this beautiful strong-boned youth was no more Lucius’s friend than the hare is friend to the hound. It made me feel awkward, and I held my tongue.

  Eventually we passed under a stone arch and came out once more at the fountain-court where we had entered. He gave a languid sigh, like a man who is sickening for something.

  ‘Are your friends not here?’ I said, looking about. ‘Where did you arrange to meet them?’

  ‘What friends?’ he snapped, rounding on me. ‘You are here, aren’t you? What are you talking about?’

  I was about to say, ‘Then why
did you come at all?’ But I did not.

  I was beginning to understand.

  There was a spreading plane tree beside the gateway to the street, and a marble seat beneath. Here he sat down.

  ‘Well you may leave now,’ he said, with the tone of one dismissing a slave. ‘I think I shall wait here for a while, and see who comes and goes.’

  I left him. I remembered he had said he did not like to go alone to the palaistra. He had asked me only because there was no one else to ask. I felt angry and ashamed, for it seemed to me the only purpose of the morning had been his pursuit of the youth he had called Menexenos. Indeed, I should have considered it altogether a wasted morning, if, at that time, so many of my days working for my stepfather had not seemed no more than wasted time.

  When next I saw Lucius, a few days later, it was at a large gathering that Titus was holding at the praetor’s residence. He showed no sign of friendliness; he made no mention of the morning at the palaistra; indeed he scarcely spoke to me at all. All this I shrugged off; but there was worse to come, which I could not ignore.

  That evening, Titus was entertaining important men visiting from Rome: two influential senators and their friends, acquaintances of Scipio, who that year was consul. He had brought in extra couches, and turned the long entrance hall with its frescoed walls and fine fluted columns into a banqueting room. The food, as usual, was exquisite, and from Syracuse he had hired a famous bard he knew, sending a boat specially to Sicily to fetch him. He wanted, he had said to me, to show these men from Rome some of the fine things Greece could offer.

  And there was more on offer that night than food alone.

  If, up to now, I have not mentioned love, there is a reason. There had been girls enough at Praeneste to be courted, and to be had. But after Epeiros something had changed. I knew the urgings of my growing body; but something – a deep-seated reluctance I was aware of only partly – held me back, like the worm in the apple that keeps one from biting.

  Whatever it was, my instinct shied from it, and if ever some pretty girl smiled at me, I was civil, and cool, and would walk on.

  Once, before one of his banquets, Titus had said privately to me, ‘Xanthe has many friends, you know . . . You need only say the word.’

  I had thanked him, but answered that I was happy with the company as it was, and he had said no more.

  Yet I had answered with only half the truth, for in my deepest heart I yearned for love, though in my imagination it had no form. It became something I thought about. Why, when other men seemed content, was I not? Had Epeiros changed me for ever? It seemed to me that it was so, but I did not understand it. I began to think that I was not capable of love at all.

  That evening, while the other guests were still arriving, Titus took my elbow, and leading me discreetly to an alcove said, ‘Xanthe has brought a friend of hers tonight. Her name is Myrtilla. I was going to put her next to Terentius, but his sister has come from Rome and they will sit together. So I have put her with you. I hope you don’t mind.’ He grinned and added, ‘Anyway, she is good company. I think you will like her.’

  After this I looked out for her, as you may suppose, and noticed straightaway when she walked in with Pasithea.

  She was dressed in a short white dress of fine linen, with a bronze clasp in the shape of a dolphin. I guessed she was a little older than I, perhaps seventeen or eighteen. Her hair was black, like mine, and she wore it short. The slave took her mantle, and she paused to scan the room with dark intelligent eyes. Her body – or as much of it as one saw – was lithe and smooth, like a dancer’s.

  Lucius was sitting a few couches away from me, in the corner under the lamp-standard. As she passed I noticed his eyes go up from his wine-cup and follow her. He seemed about to say something; but Pasithea, walking tall and stately beside her, immediately turned to him and said, ‘Greetings, Lucius. I hope I find you well,’ and at this he grunted and returned to his wine.

  The dinner passed as Titus had planned. There was a good deal of political talk, of Rome, of the war and the defeat of Carthage, which could only be a matter of time now. The bard and the kitharist who accompanied him were politely applauded, and when he had done, and the tables had been cleared away, the guests left their couches, joining friends, or wandering about the torchlit garden.

  Myrtilla, as Titus had promised, had been a faultless companion.

  I suppose I had drunk more than usual, and I daresay the wine helped; but by the time the meal was over my initial shyness had gone and she and I were talking easily.

  Pasithea, who had been sitting elsewhere, came and sat beside us.

  ‘I think,’ she said smiling at us both, ‘that Titus is in love.’

  ‘Well that is no surprise,’ I said laughing and glancing down the long room to where Titus was standing with his arm about Xanthe on the steps of the terrace.

  ‘Oh, everyone loves Xanthe,’ she said, ‘but after tonight I realized that Titus has another love affair as well.’ She gave a teasing laugh and flashed her brown eyes at me; and then, to the slave-boy who came offering wine, ‘No, my dear, no more.’

  I watched the boy hurry off to the corner, where Lucius was angrily beckoning.

  ‘Another love affair?’ I asked, half joking. I knew Titus was fond of Xanthe, and they were as much friends as lovers. But there was no other that I knew of.

  ‘Why yes, something far more serious,’ she said. ‘He is in love with Greece – or, at least, with the idea of Greece. Did you see his face when the bard was singing? He was lost in it. Unreachable upon the plain of Troy.’

  The bard had ended by singing of how old white-bearded Priam had ridden out from Troy to ransom his dead son Hektor, falling at Achilles’ knees and begging him to accept the gifts he brought in exchange for the body of his child. I had never heard it done better.

  Even the old senators had ceased their talking and fallen silent. I had even seen one of them wipe a tear from his eye – discreetly, for, being Roman, he would not have cared to have it noticed.

  ‘Well the song was beautiful,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and Titus is infatuated and he is a dreamer. He is in love with an image.’

  I looked at her. She was wearing, that night, a sumptuous gown of shimmering green, woven with tiny white roses. Her hair, bound up with a jewelled fillet, fell in little sculpted curls beside her ears.

  Smiling I said, ‘Any man can love from afar. Surely, Pasithea, you know that more than anyone.’

  She laughed her pleasant laugh and rested her hand on my knee.

  ‘Well you are a charming, delightful, handsome boy,’ she said, ‘and if I were fifteen years younger, I should take you home and eat you up.

  But nowadays my bed is big enough only for one, and I am not going to let you turn my head with your flattery.’

  I laughed.

  ‘But mark my words,’ she went on, ‘every coin has two faces. One day Titus will wake from his dream, and then he will see the other, and he will be disappointed.’ Someone called her name and she glanced round. ‘But I am being far too serious. So I shall leave you two alone, and go and talk to my other friends, before they start to think I am neglecting them.’

  We watched her drift off through the crowd, pausing here and there to talk as she went. I turned to Myrtilla and smiled.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, taking my arm in hers. ‘Let us go and walk in the garden for a while. It is a beautiful night, and I am tired of all these people.’

  We made our way outside. There had been a rain shower, and the night air was cool and pleasant. Through the streaks of cloud, over the light of the cressets, the Milky Way glittered like a silver belt.

  The air smelled of grass, and the delicate fragrance of night-scented flowers.

  At the end of the terrace, where the vine grew up between the columns and cascaded down, broad-leaved, from the stonework, she turned and kissed me on the lips. ‘That,’ she said smiling, ‘is for being such a good companion. I h
ave enjoyed myself. I thought I was going to have to spend the evening with one of those grim old senators.’

  We laughed; and then I remembered to kiss her in return.

  She met my eye. ‘I have a little house close by, and a bed large enough for two.’

  I frowned and looked out into the darkness. Along the meandering paths, the torches flickered, burning low. The shrubs beyond the terrace rustled with a breeze blowing in from the bay.

  It is not in my nature to force myself on anyone. But, during the course of the evening, she had made it discreetly clear what was on offer, if I chose to take it. I had enjoyed myself, though I had not thought I should. We had laughed and talked. In the end it seemed churlish to refuse, and somehow weak. Besides, after her pleasant company I did not want her to think I did not like her.

  I smiled, and was about to answer, when the bushes at my side rustled and cracked, and from the overgrown path a dark figure emerged into the light.

  Myrtilla stifled a cry and jumped back.

  ‘Hello, Lucius,’ I said, startled.

  He did not answer, but looked straight past me with unfocused eyes at Myrtilla. He must have been watching us. ‘Who is the girl?’

  he said in Latin, as if she were some goat at market.

  In Greek I answered, ‘This is Myrtilla, my friend.’

  All of a sudden he lunged forward and groped her roughly with his spread hand. With a cry she pulled away. He snatched at her and with a tear the top of her thin tunic came away. The little dolphin brooch that had held it fell clattering on the floor at her feet.

  ‘Come in with me,’ he said, trying to hold her by the arm.

  In a quick, deft movement she slid from his grip and stood away, holding up her tunic with one arm and extending the other, ready to fend him off. In a slow, clear voice she said, ‘I choose my friends, sir, and whoever you are, you are not one of them.’